Weighing Claims of 'Phonics First' Advocates

Does research support a "phonics first" approach to teaching
reading, as this method's proponents often argue?

This question is not entirely answerable by factual evidence or
statistical data; the issue is partly a matter of opinion--a question
of what we value. For those who value the ability to construct meaning
from texts over the ability to identify words in isolation, the
phonics-first approach does not appear to be the best strategy. Indeed,
emphasizing direct, systematic phonics instruction in the primary
grades may do more long-range harm than good.

Despite claims to the contrary, all educators agree that children
need to learn that English is to a significant degree an alphabetic
language and that they need to develop a functional grasp of basic
letter-and-sound patterns. What is at issue is whether phonics should
be taught and tested in isolation, as a prelude to reading interesting
texts--the phonics-first view--or whether phonics strategies should be
developed more gradually, in the context of reading and writing
materials that interest students.

The debate has been fueled recently by federal legislative actions
and by the distribution of controversial new documents about reading.
An amendment to the literacy bill passed by the Senate in February
would allow federal money to be used for training teachers in phonics
instruction. This legislation was influenced by a Senate Republican
Policy Committee document--entitled "Illiteracy: An Incurable Disease
or Education Malpractice?"--suggesting that the cure for illiteracy is
"the restoration of the instructional practice of intensive, systematic
phonics in every primary school in America!" This paper, in turn, cites
the summary of Marilyn J. Adams's study, Beginning To Read: Thinking
and Learning About Print, newly released by the Center for the Study of
Reading and supported by the Education Department's office of
educational research and improvement.

From the point of view of fact, we should ask: Are such
recommendations supported by evidence? Is the evidence fairly
represented? Have phonics-first advocates considered all the relevant
research or only a select sampling? And perhaps more important, from
the viewpoint of values: What are researchers measuring when they claim
that systematic phonics produces better reading "achievement"? Might
there not be more important things to measure, if our long-range goal
is to help students become literate enough not merely to read signs and
labels but to participate fully in American life?

The absurdities and falsehoods of the Republican policy committee's
alleged "study" might seem laughable if this document had not been
distributed to governors and state legislators as well as members of
the business community and educators; or if Senator William L.
Armstrong of Colorado, the committee's chairman, had not recently had
it read into the Congressional Record; or if, using the document as a
rationale, Mr. Armstrong had not persuaded his colleagues to pass the
aforementioned amendment.

The simplistic argument that systematic phonics will cure illiteracy
is not, however, the only reason for educators' concern about this
document's wide distribution. Most policymakers lack sufficient
background knowledge to question the adequacy or veracity of the
evidence offered, much less the pronouncements made without any
evidence.

In fact, misinformation abounds in the paper. It claims, for
example, that there are basically only two ways to teach reading:
phonics and "look and say," less derogatorily known as the sight-word
method. Other labels used to describe the latter approach, the document
continues, include "whole language." Nothing could be further from the
truth.

In a sight-word approach, children read stilted
primerese--"stories'' with new vocabulary words repeated at least five
times in a selection--and they may be drilled with flash cards
containing frequently used, "basic" words. In whole-language
classrooms, children read and reread favorite rhymes, songs, and
patterned stories with repeated phrases, sentences, and stanzas--not
single words repeated in unnatural contexts. Gradually, students learn
to recognize many words in isolation as well as in the familiar
contexts, and gradually--but with teacher assistance--they develop the
phonics knowledge they need to read.

A sight-word approach uses a part-to-whole strategy, and in this
respect, it resembles phonics. By contrast, whole-language instruction
moves from wholes toward parts, often in a single day's activities.

Ignoring this crucial distinction, the "Illiteracy" paper lumps
together look-and-say, whole-language, and language-experience (also
different from a sight-word approach), and then claims that this method
"is currently used by nearly 85 percent of the schools in the United
States." Even many advocates of systematic phonics would be surprised
by this assertion. For example, Jeanne Chall--cited approvingly in the
document--points out in the 1983 update of her 1967 book Learning To
Read: The Great Debate that "soon after the late 1960's, basal reading
programs introduced more phonics, and test developers began to test
decoding skills in standardized achievement tests for the early
grades."

To determine the validity of the claim that the "look and say"
method is widely used, educators, parents, policymakers, and other
interested citizens need only examine the teachers' manuals and pupil
workbooks of the basal programs that have been the mainstay of the
reading curriculum in the vast majority of our schools. At least from
the early 1970's to the late 1980's, virtually all of these programs
have introduced phonics in the primary grades, typically in
kindergarten. This may not be the kind of "intensive, systematic
phonics" advocated by the drafters of the document, but it is most
certainly phonics. It is also more phonics than most children need--and
far too much for many children.

We must ask, then, whether the sources cited in this paper are any
more reliable than the document itself. In fact, many of these studies
are deficient. And the conclusions that popular summarizers draw are
subject to a criticism implicit in Richard Turner's research review in
the December issue of Phi Delta Kappan: that any "advantage" for early
systematic phonics continues for only a short while and is evident only
when reading "achievement" is measured by standardized tests that
typically place a higher premium on word-attack and word-identification
skills than on comprehension of connected text.

Though the summary of Ms. Adams's report is much more scholarly, her
study actually contributes no new evidence to support the effectiveness
of systematic phonics. She does cite two studies of the effects of
Follow Through, a direct-instruction program that places heavy emphasis
on phonics, but the conclusion that heavy phonics instruction leads to
improved reading is suspect.

For instance, close examination of a study reported in the American
Educational Research Journal reveals that, while 5th and 6th graders
who were in the Follow Through program during their primary years
scored much higher than comparison groups on a test of decoding skills,
they scored considerably lower in reading comprehension. Ms. Adams
reports this result simply as an overall difference in favor of the
Follow Through group. Similarly, scrutiny of a study of high-school
seniors does not clearly indicate that either phonics or direct
instruction can be credited with the various kinds of superiority
Follow Through students demonstrated in comparison with their
peers.

Not only does the research typically cited in favor of phonics fail
to support this approach, but the contrary evidence is rarely even
acknowledged by phonics-first advocates.

Some of this research is admittedly too new to have reached
mainstream journals. Much of the more recent work is described by Diane
Stephens in a report forthcoming from the same Center for the Study of
Reading that published Ms. Adams's study. For example, in what the
researcher claims was the first quantitative comparison of a
whole-language with a code-emphasis approach, Helene Ribowsky compared
two classes of kindergartners and found that the whole-language group
showed greater gains and scored better on all post-tests, even on the
Metropolitan Achievement Test's letter-recognition and phoneme/grapheme
test for consonants.

In a study involving at-risk 1st and 2nd graders, Carole Stice of
Tennessee State University and Nancy Bertrand of Middle Tennessee State
University found the whole-language students to achieve better results
according to all measures, including the reading portion of the
Stanford Achievement Test.

These and other recent studies suggest that, in comparison with
children in whole-language classrooms, phonics-first students may not
always do better on tests of isolated skills admin4istered in the
primary grades.

But determining which approach can produce the highest scores on
standardized tests in the primary grades should not be the central
issue--much less the only issue.

Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading
tests suggest that we are succeeding rather well at what has all too
often been our major aim: improving scores on tests of "basic" skills,
including literal comprehension and low-level inference. But we are not
adequately stimulating the development of students' ability to read or
reason critically.

For example, in the 1984 assessment, only 39 percent of the
17-year-olds tested could find, summarize, and explain relatively
complicated information, and only 5 percent could synthesize and learn
from specialized reading materials. The comparable figures for the 1988
assessment are 41.8 percent and 4.8 percent respectively.

Given such results, it is not surprising that major education groups
are encouraging us to consider what we mean by literacy, what kinds of
literacy the next generation will need to develop, and how instruction,
assessment, and research can promote the kinds of literacy8deemed
important. The concept of literacy implicit in the report of the
English Coalition conference, for instance, is much broader than that
reflected in our measures of "achievement."

If our long-range goal is to help students develop sufficient
literacy to participate fully in our society, heavy emphasis on phonics
and other low-level skills may subvert our intentions. Students who
have trouble with skills-work are often assigned more of the same,
given fewer opportunities to read, and in general viewed as incompetent
at reading. Such treatment lowers self-esteem as well as desire to
read, thus contributing to the likelihood that these students will
develop only marginal literacy at best.

Research, then, must look primarily not at test scores but at
factors such as these: Are students reading to comprehend, rather than
just say or identify words? Are they developing a flexible repertoire
of reading strategies, including techniques for synthesizing and
evaluating what they read--and write? Do they view themselves as good
readers and writers who can enjoy and profit from various kinds of
materials? Do they voluntarily read and write outside of school? Are
they developing the ability to think critically and creatively through
language?

In short, are they developing the attitudes and habits of
independent, self-motivated, lifelong readers and writers?

Whole-language classrooms foster these habits and values to a far
greater degree than more traditional classrooms--especially those
emphasizing phonics first.

Connie Weaver, professor of English at Western Michigan University,
is director of the National Council of Teachers of English Commission
on Reading and author of the forthcoming book Understanding Whole
Language.

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